The head football coach at Breckinridge County High School took about 20 players on a school bus late last month to his church, where nearly half of them were baptized, school officials say.

The mother of one player said her 16-year-old son was baptized without her knowledge and consent, and she is upset that a public school bus was used to take players to a church service — and that the school district’s superintendent was there and did not object.

“Nobody should push their faith on anybody else,” said Michelle Ammons, whose son, Robert Coffey, said Coach Scott Mooney told him and other players that the Aug. 26 outing would include only a motivational speaker and a free steak dinner.

Two other parents, however, said in interviews that their sons told them that Mooney had said the voluntary outing to Franklin Crossroads Baptist Church in Hardin County would include a revival.

Mooney, contacted by phone, said school district officials instructed him not to comment.

But Superintendent Janet Meeks, who is a member of the church and witnessed the baptisms, said she thinks the trip was proper because attendance was not required, and another coach paid for the gas.

Meeks said parents weren’t given permission slips to sign but knew the event would include a church service, if not specifically a baptism. She said eight or nine players came forward and were baptized.

“None of the players were rewarded for going and none were punished for not going,” Meeks said.

David Friedman, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said in an interview that the trip would appear to violate Supreme Court edicts on the separation of church and state — even if it was voluntary and the school district didn’t pay for the fuel.

“If players want to attend the coach’s church and get baptized, that’s great,” Friedman said. But a coach cannot solicit player attendance at school, he said, noting, “Coaches have great power and persuasion by virtue of their position, and they have to stay neutral.”

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A little football-style baptism.

Neither the ACLU nor the Liberty Counsel, a self-described religious rights group quoted as saying the coach did nothing wrong, are involved in the dispute — but you know that’s going to change soon enough.

As the article notes, in March the U.S. Supreme Court — not the one with Sonia Sotomayor on it — “rejected an appeal from a high school football coach in New Jersey who wanted to bow his head and kneel during prayers led by his players, despite a school district policy prohibiting it.”

The fight in the Kentucky case is going to be over whether any school employee can invite a student or player to a church without parental permission without violating church-state separation, or whether they can even do so at all, given the possible coercive nature of the invitation (for example, what if a football coach demoted a player who didn’t go?).

Perhaps Hardin County Schools needed a mandate from the state superintendent to have kids opt out of the church service, like the first-in-the-nation order he barked to local districts to give parents the option of not allowing their children to allow today’s Barack Obama speech to schools on the importance of furthering the People’s Godless Socialist Revolution of 2008.

You know, if Michelle Ammons did want to bring in the ACLU to sue the school, she might have a case. The story, intentionally or not, paints a picture of a coach, superintendent and church willing to — what’s the popular term these days? — indoctrinate children behind their parents’ backs.

[Superintendent] Meeks said she would have sought the consent of parents for the baptism of students if they had been “7 or 8 or 9” years old. But she didn’t think it was necessary for the players who are “16 or 17.”

She said that if Robert’s parents didn’t know that the outing was going to include a revival service it was because “he apparently was not forthcoming with his parents.”

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Ron Davis, said that he requires minors to obtain their parents’ consent to be baptized, but he added: “Sometimes 16 year olds look like 18 years. We did the best we could.”

He said the event on Aug. 26 “was a great service” and that attendance by the players was strictly voluntary.

“I trust the coach 100 percent,” he said of Mooney. “He is a fine young man and he is sure not going to manipulate anyone.” …

[Ammons] said she was prepared to drop the matter until she found out that Meeks attended the service. She said she consulted a lawyer in Elizabethtown but hasn’t decided what action she will take.

Certainly for many evangelicals, converting souls is an important part of their religion. That is not always a bad thing. But trying to convert children as you squeeze out their parents is treading on dangerous ground. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone involved in the case of Muslim-turned-Christian-runaway Rifqa Bary.